Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

I'm working on a book manuscript. That's why the blog's been pretty quiet. Here's a draft of the proposal. Not the most entertaining thing I've written, but important. I'll take constructive suggestions. But please don't quote the Bible to me.

The Case Against Christ: Why Believing is No Longer Reasonable

Table of ContentsIntroduction: Christianity and a Dissenting VoiceChapter 1: The History of the Jesus StoryChapter 2: Salem Witch TrialsChapter 3: Transmission and ReliabilityChapter 4: Abducted by AliensChapter 5: IrrationalityChapter 6: The Problem of other ReligionsChapter 7: Would God do Miracles?Chapter 8: The “F” WordChapter 9: Conclusion

Projected book length is about 70,000 words. I have drafts of the Introduction, Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7.

Scope of the Book

The goal of the book is to present a number of arguments and considerations that raise substantial challenges to being Christian. More specifically, it focuses on questions about the reasonableness of believing that Jesus was a divine being that was resurrected from the dead 2,000 years ago. My central argument is that believing that Jesus was resurrected from the dead on the basis of the evidence available to us—primarily a small group of testimonial stories recorded in the Gospels—is inconsistent with our other conventions concerning belief and evidence. I will present a number of other ordinary cases where we have a body of comparable evidence, yet we would reject the analogous conclusion. In fact, there are numerous cases where we have better evidence—both in terms of quantity and quality—but we would not accept a similar supernatural conclusion. Several other considerations fortify this argument: problems with the transmission and reliability of the Jesus story made clear by probability theory, modern developments in epistemology, and recent empirical research psychology also demonstrate that we have insufficient evidence to make believing the Jesus story reasonable. Additional discussions of other religions, miracles, and faith will complete the book.

Full Description

Introduction: The book begins with a two discussions to set the stage. First, I give a summary of the state of Christianity today—how many people are Christians? What types of Christianity are prevalent? And what do they believe? Not only is Christianity, particularly in the United States, a dominant cultural, political, moral, and spiritual institution, but a set of cultural conventions have developed that suppress open, objective critical thinking about it. We are averse to directing critical evaluation at religious beliefs or the grounds on which people build them. Concerns about toleration, respect, and freedom of religion have led us to the point where even asking questions or raising doubts about the wisdom of being a religious adherent are met with protest. Our sensitivities have arisen in part from a confusion of religious affiliation with ethnic identity; raising doubts or criticizing someone’s religious beliefs feels offensive the way ethnic criticisms do, and they are wrong for similar reasons. As a result, doubters are considered angry, intolerant, spiteful, or strident. For example, the majority of the negative responses to the works of the New Atheists—Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens—have attacked them on just these grounds. In an atmosphere where critical inquiries about Christianity are stifled, poor thinking has run amok. Unfettered religious belief thrives in this indulgent environment.

The context has made it difficult to ask and answer a vital question: do the people who are the typical believers in the United States, 21st century adults with a modern education, and with the benefits of all the knowledge at our disposal, have adequate grounds to justify our believing that Jesus, the cornerstone of the Christian religious tradition, was a divine being who performed supernatural acts? In preparation for the arguments I will give, I plead for openness about the possibility that Christianity is built on a mistake. I make some suggestions about the relationship of openness to idealized rational belief formation, and I begin to outline some principles of critical thinking. My goals are to dissuade people from accepting the Jesus story on the basis of the information that we have, instill a desire to be a better critical thinker, and outline some principles and procedures for being more rational, particularly about religion and Christianity.

Chapter 1: The History of the Jesus StoryIn order to address the question of reasonable belief in Jesus, Chapter 1 will give a general summary from the mainstream scholarly consensus of the history and character of the documents that relay the Jesus saga to us. The Gospels were written 30-90 years after the alleged events of Jesus’ death. The writers based their accounts on reports from unknown verbal sources with an unknown number of links to the alleged eyewitnesses. In the next 200 years or so, these accounts were copied while other Christian writings proliferated. Eventually the book that we know as the Bible was sifted from these writings and many of the other sources were lost, destroyed, or deemed heretical. I draw on prominent scholarly works to give an accurate picture of the relevant events in the history of the information that will be used in later chapters. I also make a novel application of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy to a common view about the nature of the modern Bible.

Chapter 2: Salem Witch TrialsThe general question facing us is under what conditions do we have a body of historical evidence that might lead us to conclude that some supernatural, miraculous, magical, or otherwise extraordinary event has occurred. Many Christians believe that the evidence we have concerning Jesus is sufficient to cross this threshold. The problem is that there are numerous examples in our lives where a comparable level of proof has been met (or exceeded!) but we reject the analogous conclusion. The accumulated body of evidence concerning the occurrence of witchcraft in Salem, Mass., in the 1600s is far better in quality and quantity than the evidence we have for the resurrection of Jesus. At Salem, they performed careful investigations, held trials, acquired sworn affidavits and testimonies from the alleged witnesses themselves, and so on. Yet a reasonable person does not think that Sarah Goode, Rebecca Nurse, and the other accused were actually witches. The belief that something else that can be naturally explained was going on at Salem is inconsistent with the belief that Jesus was divine and came back from the dead. I consider the implications of the Salem case for our views about what sorts of conclusions are reasonable and under what circumstances. In order to be reasonable and consistent, the Salem Witch argument forces us to either accept that the Jesus evidence is inadequate, or conclude that there were real witches at Salem. The latter is not reasonable, so we cannot justify believing in the resurrection of Jesus.

Chapter 3: It has been argued many times before that the decades between the alleged events of Jesus’ death and their recording in the Gospels raise doubts about the veracity of the account. I bring several new considerations to this discussion. In order to get an intuitive sense on the scale of the doubts, I use miracle testimonies from a famous source: Lourdes, France. I roughly estimate of the general reliability of human miracle testimony at .000016. Lourdes has had millions of alleged miraculous events, but only a handful have been acknowledged as real by the Catholic church. Other considerations like a propensity to accept supernatural claims, ignorance, a lack of skepticism and scientific skills further undermine the reliability of those who claimed to have seen Jesus come back from the dead. Additional evidence from recent research in psychology on memory, bereavement hallucinations, social dynamics, and other relevant features of the human cognitive system erode any confidence we might have had in the alleged eyewitnesses.

A simple probability argument also undermines our confidence in the transmission process that would have communicated the alleged eyewitness reports to us by way of the Gospels. The fidelity of a system of information transmission can be calculated by multiplying the reliability of each link in the system. If a chain of transmission conveys information through only three links (people hearing and repeating the story) where the reliability of each link is .8, the odds that the information will be accurately transmitted through the system goes down to .51. Add in the other considerations from above and the balance tips substantially against believing in the resurrection of Jesus.

Chapter 4: Abducted by AliensWe can bring out the inconsistency of believing that Jesus was a divine being who came back from the dead another way. I give a hypothetical example where someone, call him Matthew, tries to convince you than an alien abduction story is true. He wasn’t abducted, nor was it someone who he knows. He heard the story from some other passionate believers that someone named Smith was abducted. They didn’t witness the event either. The abduction allegedly happened centuries ago, and the people who claim to have seen it retold the story to others, and an unknown number of people then repeated the story until it came to Matthew. But he’s sure on the basis features of the story itself that the people who communicated the story were honest, good intentioned, and deeply committed to the cause. He heard it from them and now he’s trying to convince you that you should believe on the basis of this body of information. The alien abduction example illustrates a powerful lesson about the weakness of the Jesus story. If the resurrection advocate rejects the analogy, we can alter the fictional example as much as necessary in order for Matthew’s story to cross the believability threshold. Re-engineering the alien abduction story until it is believable will reveal how far short the information we have about Jesus falls. Our acceptance of the Jesus case is ad hoc and inconsistent.

Chapter 5: Irrationality The arguments in the book thus far have made a number of presumptions about principles of evidence, reasonableness, and the conditions for rational belief. With those arguments in mind, this chapter makes some of the theoretical issues surrounding irrational belief clear. The focus, as has been suggested so far, is on consistency. One of the hallmarks (the chapter will discuss several others) of a rational belief system is one that treats the circumstances that lead to belief with a consistent set of evidential and inferential standards. The best kind of thinking, says Jonathan Baron, “is whatever kind of thinking best helps people achieve their goals.” Ad hoc, inconsistent, or arbitrary epistemic practices undermines the achievement of one’s goals. The latitude that we have granted the case of Jesus in our adherence to it amounts to a corruption of good practices in a healthy, rational cognitive life. This chapter will also outline a paradigm procedure for rational belief formation, and with the arguments and examples of the previous chapters in mind we will have a more sophisticated grasp of the problems with believing in Jesus.

Chapter 6: The Problem of Other Religions

With H.L. Mencken’s help, I offer a roster of 500 “dead” gods—forgotten, neglected, and rejected gods from human history. It’s been argued that Christians are atheists about all of these gods already, and that they just need to take one more step (see Dawkins and Harris.) What is the attitude that the Christian should take about Gefjun, Sobek, and Thor? And what are the implications for believing that the God of Christianity (not Islam or Judaism) is real? There is an argument against Christianity to be made here, but it has not been well articulated yet. I draw out several lessons from the dead gods: After considering hundreds and hundreds of applications for patents on perpetual motion machines, patent offices in the U.S. and Britain finally put an end to a dead end pursuit. “We are not going to waste our time pursuing some far-fetched possibilities because we are justified in concluding that the whole enterprise is based on a mistake.”This conclusion should not be dogmatic, but the utter failure of all of the perpetual motion machines that they had considered justifies them in adopting a very high standard of proof for any further attempts to get something from nothing. The 500 gods example should teach us a similar lesson about Christianity. Furthermore, if all of those gods are not real, then wouldn’t it be fair to apply the same reasoning to the gods that are familiar, like the God of Christianity? If there are enough similarities between the Christian God and the 500 gods, and between the role that the 500 gods played for their believers and the role that the Christian God played for its believers, then the same grounds for rejection should apply.

Chapter 7: Would God do Miracles?

God, through Jesus, and independently, is alleged to have performed countless miracles in order to achieve his ends in the world. And Christianity would be nothing without its miracles. But there are a number of problems and profoundly puzzling questions about the prospect of the almighty, all knowing creator of the universe employing miracles to achieve his ends. I argue that if we understand what it would mean for a being to have all power, all knowledge, and all goodness, it is clear that such a being would not perform miracles. They would be an ineffectual, backwards, and irrational means for God to achieve his ends. Christianity is built upon their occurrence, but their occurrence can’t be reconciled with a coherent account of God.

Chapter 8: The ”F” Word

One objection that will be on the minds of many of the readers of the previous chapters will be the question of faith. “Perhaps the evidence is insufficient to make it reasonable to believe in Jesus, but belief was always a matter of faith for us. It was never about the evidence or believing only that which is dictated by it. These arguments do nothing to undermine Christian faith.”

Believing by faith is believing despite the absence of evidence or despite contrary evidence that might otherwise lead you to reject a claim. I consider a number of other non-religious and religious examples to bring out the general features of faith.

As with many of these topics, the virtues and flaws of faith have been analyzed at great length. I will present two important problems with the faith answer to the preceding arguments against Christianity.

The Public Citizen Problem: The majority of the 300 million people in the United States are Christians. Many of them read the Bible, go to church, pray, and practice Christian rituals. As a result, Christian doctrines color their worldviews. Christian beliefs influence their votes for school board members, for presidential candidates, for which bond measures they will support. They form views and vote on same sex marriage, abortion, stem cell research, healthcare, and social policies on the basis of Christian values. Those values inform who they go to war with, who they will kill, who they will punish, and who they will reward in wars and in courtrooms. Christian values, for good or ill, affect almost every aspect of the public lives that they lead in a community with the rest of us. Opting out of the ordinary requirements of good reasoning and sound decision making is simply not acceptable. People cannot invoke faith to protect or justify their beliefs and actions when those beliefs and actions have such a direct and significant impact on everyone else around them. Being a good citizen and meeting one’s minimal moral responsibilities to your neighbor means that the faith umbrella cannot be used to shield Christian belief from critical scrutiny.

The Floodgate Problem: If disregarding the implications of the available evidence is permissible in the case of being a Christian, then what standards can there be to discriminate between all of the other options that defy the evidence? If the evidence doesn’t matter, then on what grounds can we justify or prefer Christianity? The Christian prefers her doctrine to that of any of the 500 gods on the list from chapter 6. What will the criteria of preference be if the evidence for the reality of the god or events in question is disregarded? We need criteria to judge the merits of Christianity over atheism, Jainism over Islam, or Santa over no Santa. The issues are too important for the guiding principle to simply be “believe that doctrine that I am most familiar with, or grew up learning.” Rational grounds are the most reliable, proven, and safe method we have for discerning what’s true and false, right and wrong. What’s true matters.

Justifying a doctrine by faith also disqualifies it from making any claims about reality. The Christian cannot on the one had insist that believing by faith is epistemically acceptable while on the other hand laying claim to know truths about what humans are, where we came from, what our purpose is, or what we should do with our lives. If the worldview ultimately rests on faith, then those claims are groundless.

Cross checking, tribunal, separation, discrimination, sifting the acceptable from the unacceptable, the importance of constructing an accurate model of the world in our cognitive lives.

The public citizen problem: school boards, presidential votes, taxes, neighborhoods, social and moral decisions, etc.

Need for cross checking is unavoidable.Failing to make reasonable discriminations between alternatives is dangerous.

Chapter 9: Conclusion

This chapter will summarize the arguments: We only have a tenuous thread of evidence connecting us to the alleged resurrection of Jesus. Examples like the Salem Witch Trials and Alien Abductions with analogous weaknesses (and strengths) to the Jesus story show that we are being inconsistent and irrational when we believe that Jesus came back from the dead. Purported miracles at Lourdes and a empirical research show that human miracle testimony is highly unreliable, even more than we may have thought. The believability of the Jesus story is further eroded by problems with transmission across fallible human agents to the writers of the Gospels. Inconsistency is a hallmark of irrationality. An idealized standard of rational belief formation requires actively seeking out and balanced consideration of possibly disconfirming evidence. 500 dead gods, and many more, from human history teaches us a lesson about human religiousness and raises the bar for Christianity. Performing miracles cannot be reconciled with the acts of an infinitely powerful, all knowing, all good being, such as God. The Christian does not want to justify their belief by faith because of the ancillary problems that faith creates.

Readership

The book is pitched at the same market of readers as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Paul Davies, Francis Collins, Sam Harris, John Loftus, and Dan Barker.

Book sales of these volumes in recent years suggest that a well-written, thoughtful, and accessible book about the subject has a big market.

While there are some calculations of probability, the writing is not technical and the use of powerful analogies and examples is intended to make some complicated issues in epistemology, psychology, and probability accessible and entertaining. My intention is to push the discussion of Christian belief into the 21st century, and everyone who is a Christian or who is affected by Christian belief has a stake in the arguments of the book.

19 comments:

As a recently deconverted ex-Christian, I'm eager to hear what you have to say.

However, I would sound a note of caution where probability arguments are concerned. (I love probability as much as the next guy, having majored in math in college.) You said, "I roughly estimate of the general reliability of human miracle testimony at .000016." I haven't read you book, so maybe the are more facts behind that number than I now imagine, but it sounds dubious to me. You probably multiplied "reasonable" probabilities for various things together to arrive at 0.000016. That's sound -- as long as your "reasonable" numbers are not just "guesses on the conservative side." If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to establish your probability components with facts. For example, if you say that the probability of an eyewitness accurately reporting the substance of an unusual event it 0.95, establish that number with records from courtrooms or something. Remember, people have used probability arguments to prove that God exists, too. Be sure you don't fall into the same trap they did of chaining together a string of "reasonable" numbers.

I also have a caution for you about alien abductions. If you're going to say that we have this mass of evidence that lends credibility to these accounts, yet we know that alien abductions don't happen, you might not get very far with your audience. About half of the U.S. population believes that aliens are among us so if you say "we know" that abduction stories are bunk, your audience may respond, "We know no such thing."

And a final caution: Yes, there is a market for books such as yours, but you may need to self-publish. I say that because I recently read an exceptional deconversion book by Ken Daniels called Why I Believed. I thought it was at least as good as Dan Barker's or John Loftus', which I had also read, yet Daniels was unable to find a publisher and had to self-publish it, selling it at cost. You may have better connections than Ken Daniels, but I advise you to look on this project as a labor of love. ;)

Your book seems to follow a well worn path and is pitched at the same market as other ‘new atheists’. In doing so it is based on the same false premise, namely that the bible is the inerrant, literal word of God. This establishes a straw man you can beat to death when ever you are short of a valid point.

This invalid assumption strongly underpins the writing and voiced opinions of the likes of Dawkins, Harris et al.

Chpt 1. Most serious scholars, sceptics and atheists included (Loftus as an example) acknowledge that the central figure of the gospels lived.

The debate is then about the accuracy of the accounts. Given the history of the bible it would be irrational to expect perfect accuracy. Yet from your outline it seems you wish to present these variances as “proof” that Jesus is a myth.

As a scholar you should be wary of being a Texas Sharpshooter yourself. I trust that in the interests of intellectual honesty you will discuss the style and context of each of the gospel writers and honestly address that influence on the veracity of the gospels.

In the interests of intellectual honesty, you will of course draw out the common underlying content. Nor will you ignore the impact of persecution, the destruction Jerusalem etc on the availability of records.

Chpt 2. This seems to be an exercise in futility. In order to be reasonable and consistent, the Salem Witch argument forces us to either accept that the Jesus evidence is inadequate, or conclude that there were real witches at Salem … I fail to see a valid intellectual link.

Chpt 3. Back to the straw man of bible inerrancy. You will of course present a completely plausible account of exactly how a perfect account of the events would have been available to us if they had been true.

Chpt 4. Wow, and I thought Salem was a long bow to draw!

Chpt 5. Irrationality. Seems a reasonable topic, but I detect a level of irrational bias in The latitude that we have granted the case of Jesus in our adherence to it amounts to a corruption …. .

Chpt 6. if all of those gods are not real, then wouldn’t it be fair to apply the same reasoning to the gods that are familiar, like the God of Christianity?

Guess your starting point would have to be the first of the 10 commandments “You shall have no other Gods before me” in that it acknowledges other Gods. So I presume your point is to debate the ranking order of the various spiritual beings that the majority of Christian accept.

Chpt 7. This is actually a really good question I argue that if we understand what it would mean for a being to have all power, all knowledge, and all goodness, it is clear that such a being would not perform miracles. I too wrestle with this one, but to suggest that … it is clear that … is a bit of a stretch.

Since there is strong evidence that at least one miracle has occurred. The Catholic canonisation process is just one that (certainly more so now) rigorously investigates miracles. For your argument to be credible you would have to prove that the Catholic recognition of miracles has been wrong in each and every case – if only one miracle is substantiated then your entire atheist case is lost, not just this chapter.

Chpt 8. This is old hat! In the absence of proof absolute one way or the other we make an informed choice to believe there is, or is not a god. Aside from the agnostic we made a leap of faith.

I can present as good an argument as you that says atheism requires a bigger leap of faith than theism.

I certainly see little if any originality here – perhaps around misapplied information theory – no I won’t be buying the book.

This looks like a fun read, I'd be into having some atheist pamphlets to trade with the bible-pushers.In case this is for a pitch of some sort, I found a typo in the description for chapter 8 -- "had" instead of "hand."

I'm assuming your target audience is the on the on-the-fence Christian in which case I think the material you selected matches the target audience well (I'll grab a copy anyway even though it's been decades since I was even near the fence).

There is one thing that you don't mention in chapter 3 that I think would be helpful and that is the rate of the Catholic Church's acceptance of Lourdes miracles. I'll give the Church it's due for putting the cutoff at beyond the natural world, but with that came the consequences of humanity's increased understanding of the natural world. It's to the point now where even though they have in recent years lowered the acceptance bar, the miracles have still gone down.

I would have considered the rate data a powerful argument back in my fence sitting days.

Thanks for the input, folks. Keep in mind of course that there's a paragraph or two here representing a whole chapter that will be 20-40 pages long. So objecting to what you perceive to be the argument on the basis of what you see here will probably be uninformed. There are lots and lots of earlier blog posts, especially from the "Problems for Christianity" posts down on the left where I give longer versions of some earlier accounts of these arguments. I'm not going to take up a defense of the arguments here beyond that--that's what the book is for.

And yes, I know that I am tilting at windmills. Going after the Big J can seem pointless because so many people have had their minds corrupted by it from such an early age. But we've got to try at least.

There's really nothing to debunk on that, Anonymous. There is no evidence that there is anything like life after death, and even if there were, it wouldn't give us evidence in favor of Jesus or Christian doctrine. But look at the numerous posts I've made on this. They are linked down on the left under Problems for Immortality.

Looks promising, though many of the neo-atheists seem more interested in debunking Christianity than in debunking God, and both Old and New Testaments--and toss in Koran as well.

Moreover, some believers will grant that the bible may not be inerrant. Some might go so far to question the literal reading of the Resurrection. We could perhaps do worse than live with Jefferson's Abridged New Testament on our bookshelves, a wisdom book resting next to the sayings of Socrates, or the Buddha, or RW Emerson...

A sort of selective atheism can be seen on various sites, like Loftus's or Pz Myers. I don't usually disagree, even when they flush the eucharist, or burn an effigy of Jerry Falwell--but you won't likely see them flushing a Koran, or mocking jewish symbols.

So, like, maybe engage in some equal opportunity a-theism, and diss orthodox jews and muslims, along with the xtians.

Thanks for the input J. There are nearly 200 essays on this blog with the vast majority of them dealing with arguments for a wide, positive atheism. The book is about Christianity. You don't really think that I could tackle both topics in a single book, do you? The next book will be on wide atheism.

I need to check that draft of the proposal because several people have mentioned this issue of the infallible, inerrant word of God in the Bible. That's not a presumption that I make in the book. I'm treating the manuscripts on the New Testament the same way that historians and Bible scholars do, as a collection of human produced documents that should be treated like other historical objects.

It would be cool if you could arrange a formal debate with Gary Habermas. He'd probably be the best person to challenge your case. I think Habermas is also reasonably open to doing debates on radio, etc. So perhaps you could manage to set up something.

This will be a very interesting read when completed. Unlike most writings by the New Atheists, I think your book effectively hits moderate Christians who are casual in their faith. By this, I mean those that hedge their bets by going to church on Christmas Eve and occasionally praying. The trick is getting those people to pick up the book in the first place. It appears that you made an effort to reach that audience rather than preach to the atheist choir like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett do (albeit in a very intriging manner). I'll definitely make a trip to Barnes & Noble when it comes out.

My book is out:

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Atheism

Author:

Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.